ABSTRACT
A cognitive behavioural intervention uses both cognitive and behavioural methods to bring about change and is the most widely used intervention in children. Sleep disturbance and inadequate sleep have negative effects on a child’s cognitive development, mood regulation, behaviour and overall quality of life and family functioning. A newborn infant has a 4-hour sleep rhythm whereby he or she will awaken every 4 hours. During childhood this rhythm is gradually replaced by the adult pattern of 16 hours wakefulness followed by 8 hours’ sleep. Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder of rapid eye movement sleep characterised by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, hypnogogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, sleep paralysis and sleep fragmentation. Recurrent hypersomnia or Kleine–Levin’s syndrome is a rare disease characterised by recurrent episodes of hypersomnia with associated behavioural or cognitive disturbances, hyperphagia and hypersexuality. Rhythmic movement disorder is characterised by repetitive, stereotyped movements of the head, trunk or limbs occurring in sleep.
